Books

The Trilateral Commission and Global Governance

In 1973, David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski formed the Trilateral Commission, an elite network consisting of influential people in politics, finance and business in North America, Western Europe and Japan. The book is based on extensive research in archives of the Commission, its benefactors (including the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund) and collaborators (which included the US government, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund). The book argues that governance and diplomacy takes place in overlapping elite networks that fuses formal and informal spheres across national borders.

The European Champions [in Danish]

The European Champions depicts the national teams that have won the European Championship in football since 1980: the teams’ road to victory, their stars, style and crucial matches. The book provides a wealth of football history and thoughts on the development of the game, but at the same time each triumph is discussed in relation to the country’s national identity. Perhaps the European Championship is the largest therapeutic arena for the pan-European healing of the traumas from the Second World War.

The Americanization of the Danish Trade Union Movement [in Danish]

Why was the Danish labor movement seen as a key factor in the American Marshall aid to Denmark? How did this aid program influence the trade union movement? What implications did it have on the development of the Danish society? In recent years, the Eastern threat and influence during the Cold War has been the focus in public debates in Denmark. However, the Marshall Aid program and participation in NATO assisted Denmark with integration into the Western block, which as a result became the principal foreign impact shaping Danish society. This book focuses on labor diplomacy rather than traditional state diplomacy. It mixes political history with an analysis of cultural encounters, and concludes with a reconceptualization of the idea of Americanization. The book includes an English summary.

Eyewitness to the Occupation [in Danish]

This book is a collection of 220 eyewitness accounts from 1940-1945, which is considered the “five evil years” of German occupation of Denmark. These stories are by Danes who experienced the occupation first hand: resistance fighters, politicians, policemen, Nazis, Jews, volunteers on the German Eastern Front – men and women, young and old, high and low social status, known and unknown figures. Eyewitness to the Occupation is a straightforward historic account that provides a broad, but varied picture of events and personal experiences from an epoch-making period. The book is a mosaic of stories that can be read either in parts or chronologically as one collective narrative about that period.

Eyewitness to the Occupation. Danish Accounts of War and Everyday Life 1940-1945. Copenhagen: Haase & Søn, 2011.

From Pilestræde to Avedøre Holme [in Danish]

This book describes how a group of unskilled workers moved from being at the bottom of the hierarchy in one of Denmark’s leading media enterprises to a formidable force that could not be ignored. This is a story about unity and empowerment. But it is also a story about the many contradictions and difficulties of union work, and how vulnerable unskilled workers are in the present Danish society.

From Pilestræde to Avedøre Holme. The History of the Packer Workers in the Berlingske House, 1930-2008. Copenhagen: Own print, 2010.

capital.com [in Danish]

This is a translation of Mikael Nyberg's kapitalen.se, which is an alternate analysis of the impact of globalization on Scandinavian societies. What we are currently witnessing is not a phasing-out of the industrial society, but a process of forced capitalist industrialization. The assembly lines run faster than ever and are an integral part of the economy. Simultaneously, a mental shift has taken place from the post-war emphasis on rationality, social engineering and welfare society to an idolization of the market and a fashionable irrationality.